Your Right to Know

Hours before President Barack Obama was due to unveil proposals today to prevent mass shootings
like the one in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, the National Rifle Association released an
advertisement that referred to his two school-aged daughters.

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” a narrator says in the 35-second
television and Internet spot. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools
when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay
their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of
security.”

Obama’s two children, who attend private school in Washington, D.C., receive Secret Service
protection.

“It is disgusting on so many levels,” said former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs during
an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today.

“This reminds me of something … an ad that somebody made at two in the morning after one too
many drinks, and no one stopped it in the morning,” Gibbs said.

Gun control activists and gun rights advocates have said in recent days that they could find
common ground, particularly over the issue of expanding background checks for potential gun owners.

The NRA ad’s tone, however, and the personal nature of the attacks speaks to the cultural
gulf that divides both sides.

The clip, called “Stand and
Fight,” promotes the leading gun lobby’s proposal to put armed guards in schools. The idea has
been at the center of the NRA’s response to the Dec. 14 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, in which 20 children and 6 adults were killed.

The ad is airing on the Sportsman Channel, a cable network, but will likely receive a much
larger viewership on news stations and through the Internet.

The NRA, which says it has about 4 million members, also announced earlier this week that it
would produce a nightly one-hour cable talk show hosted by gun advocate Cam Edwards on the
Sportsman Channel.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Obama said in a recent
interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press. ”And I think the vast majority of the American people are
skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.“

In a survey released on Monday, the Pew Research Center found that people favor putting armed
guards or police officers in more schools by a two-to-one margin, 64 percent to 32 percent.